During the past three decades, feminist scholars have successfully demonstrated the ubiq uity and omnirelevance of gender as a sociocultural construction in virtually all human collectivities, past and present. Intrapsychic, interactional, and collective social processes are gendered, as are micro, meso, and macro social structures. Gender shapes, and is shaped, in all arenas of social life, from the most mundane practices of everyday life to those of the most powerful corporate actors. Contemporary understandings of gender emanate from a large community of primarily feminist scholars that spans the gamut of learned disciplines and also includes non-academic activist thinkers. However, while in corporating some cross-disciplinary material, this volume focuses specifically on socio logical theories and research concerning gender, which are discussed across the full array of social processes, structures, and institutions. As editor, I have explicitly tried to shape the contributions to this volume along several lines that reflect my long-standing views about sociology in general, and gender sociology in particular. First, I asked authors to include cross-national and historical material as much as possible. This request reflects my belief that understanding and evaluating the here-and-now and working realistically for a better future can only be accomplished from a comparative perspective. Too often, American sociology has been both tempero- and ethnocentric. Second, I have asked authors to be sensitive to within-gender differences along class, racial/ethnic, sexual preference, and age cohort lines."

What is the first question our parents asked about us after we were born? Probably, 'Is it a boy or a girl?' No single fact about us is more significant than our sex. In any human culture, it determines how others react to us and how they treat us. "Viva Le Difference", a light-hearted exploration of sex differences, shows how this view violates not only everyday experience and common sense, but the accumulating evidence of science that men and women are profoundly different creatures. Authors Anthony Walsh and Grace J. Walsh begin with a look at the genetic and hormonal bases of sex by viewing maleness and femaleness as a continuum based on the degree of masculisation of the brain. Next, they explore different sexual aspects of the human body other than the reproductive organs. They look at size, strength, and endurance, and many other differences in capacity, as well as sensory (eyes, nose, ears, etc.) differences. From there, the discussion focuses on differences in the brain and mind, health and illness among men and women, and the different ways in which men and women experience emotion, with an emphasis on that most intense emotion of all - love. Informative and entertaining, this book offers a fresh, insightful, and lively look at what makes men and women unique.

The YMCA and the YWCA have been an integral part of America's urban landscape since their emergence almost 150 years ago. Yet the significant influence these organizations had on American society has been largely overlooked. Men and Women Adrift explores the role of the YMCA and YWCA in shaping the identities of America's urban population.

Examining the urban experiences of the single young men and women who came to the cities in search of employment and personal freedom, these essays trace the role of the YMCA and the YWCA in urban America from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. The contributors detail the YMCA's early competition with churches and other urban institutions, the associations' unique architectural style, their services for members of the working class, African Americans, and immigrants, and their role in defining gender and sexual identities.

The volume includes contributions by Michelle Busby, Jessica Elfenbein, Sarah Heath, Adrienne Lash Jones, Paula Lupkin, Raymond A. Mohl, Elizabeth Norris, Cliff Putney, Nancy Robertson, Thomas Winter, and John D. Wrathall.

This collection looks from a variety of angles at the human body as it resists the determinations of gender, sexuality, socialization, and history. Ranging from classical hermaphrodites, Bruegel's blind faces and Weimar transgender surgery, via Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, state-socialist sport and Proust, to Barbie, Lari Pittman, American Psycho, IVF, and video dance, the 16 essays question the relationship between politics, culture, and desire.

This set brings together a collection of classic out-of-print works that offer some surprising new takes on the theme of sexuality in literature. Whether examining new spaces by unrepresented women writers of colour or looking afresh at gay writings of the early twentieth century, this set presents a thought-provoking take on the subject, and as such is an essential reference source.

This book explores the complexity of women's social status in the Middle East and North African region and fills a gap in the existing literature by providing an up-to-date and comprehensive portrait of women's status from a theoretical and socio-demographic perspective. The author debunks some common assumptions regarding the economic, cultural, and demographic transformations of the MENA region. The book highlights the social forces that have transformed the region over the past several decades. Debunking requires exploring the inter-relationship of multiple factors that influence women's integration into public life, factors such as fertility, education, employment and labor migration. It necessitates examining the impact of sudden oil wealth in the region as well as looking at the complex ways in which patriarchal systems are intertwined and often embedded in religion and then enforced by governments.

According to a 1992 World Health Organization report, more than 100 million couples throughout the world make love on any given day. Every moment, lovers are locked in passion, compelled by a natural urge driving all peoples in all centuries. And yet this same natural desire has all too often been regarded as a dangerous force and even branded as obscene. Religious taboos have tainted sex with guilt and punishment. Earlier in this century, artists could be imprisoned for portraying sex. Today, despite two decades of easing restrictions on sexual expression and greater freedom for the practice of non-traditional lifestyles, religious fundamentalists and other extremists seek to turn back the clock, advocating prosecution of any whom they regard as sexually subversive or exploitative, and recommending strict censorship of artistic or literary expressions of erotic emotion. The Art of Lovemaking: An Illustrated Tribute is a spirited rebuttal to those crying for renewed censorship. In this sumptuous volume, James Haught brings together the works of many modern and classic artists to show that the depiction of love and desire is not only alive and well but an important theme in art, both in the East and West, throughout the ages. While styles differ and artistic conventions vary, the same message shines through: that love is beautiful and therefore ought to be looked at and enjoyed, not regarded as shameful. The Art of Lovemaking, intended for the private pleasure of adult couples, may be perused solely for its sensual loveliness. But its purpose is also to refute three unhealthy calumnies: the puritanical axiom that sex itself is dirty, the ultrafeminist contention that any portrayal of sexdegrades women, and the vulgar notion that reduces all erotic art to the level of pornography. These fallacious views must retreat before the simple honesty of major artists depicting lovers as affectionate equals. In his superb introduction, Russell Vannoy discusses various philosophical and cultural approaches to sexuality and the problems of trying to formulate a single, hence exclusive, definition of sexual love.

This text, by a director of university counselling, examines the interplay of forces shaping the development of masculinity. It is particularly important during a period when the status of men has undergone considerable erosion in society. Counsellors, psychotherapists, mental health professionals, and all those working with teenage males will find this study of sex and gender issues, male bonding, psychosexual adjustment, situational ethics, and sexuality illuminating.

Conjugal Rites explores the legal shape of marriage as it has been determined by countless decisions concerning entry and exit into the ancient rite. Heather Brook examines the countless rules and protocols governing marriage that make it valid in the eyes of the law. She argues that the various sexual performatives associated with marriage can establish, reinforce, or rupture conjugal unity while exploring the historical and politcal regulations and prohibitions marriage has faced. Brook unites past and present, public and private, to investigate the changing meanings and effects of conjugality, and challenge the way we think about sex, gender and relationships.

This book contributes to an understanding of the complex relationship of gender and language alongside religion and religious life as experienced by various religious groups around the world. The intention is to put forward current studies in the field of linguistics and explore how gender and various religions intersect with language use. The universal and diverse experience of religion provides for this unique collection of papers concerning the use of language in religious liturgy, in religious communities, and in interaction with identity. As such, the book will attract students and researchers in discourse, gender studies and religious studies.

Debra A. Hope The Nebraska Symposium on Motivation is steeped in history and tradition. Over the years the series editors have striven to maintain the highest standards of a- demic excellence and to highlight some of the most important trends in psychology. Perusing the chapter titles in the first 53 volumes shows the shifting emphasis as the science of psychology developed in the latter half of the twentieth century. All of the most important topics are there - drive theory, social learning, the cognitive revolution, developing perspectives on understanding individual differences and the role of culture, and the increasing role of neuroscience. The key figures are there as well - Harry Harlow, Kenneth Spence, Raymond Cattell, George Kelly, Albert Bandura, Carl Rogers, Carroll Izard, Walter Mischel, Sandra Bem, Sandra Spence, Herbert Simon, David Barlow, and many others. In late 2004, I met with a group of interested graduate students, and together we developed a proposal to join this long and proud tradition with a volume on sexual orientation. Our motivation stemmed, in part, from the events around us. The same-sex m- riage debate was covered extensively in the media, reflecting a rapid and important discussion about sexual orientation that we were having (and are still having) as a society. Psychology and related fields have much to offer on many of the issues raised in this debate.

Henry James remained throughout his life focused on his boyhood and early manhood, and correspondingly on younger boys and men, and John R. Bradley illustrates how it is in the context of such narcissism that James consistently dealt with male desire in his fiction. He also traces a more subtle but related trajectory in James's writing from a Classical to a Modernist gay discourse, which in turn is shown to have been paralleled by a shift in James's fiction from naturalistic beginnings to later stylistic evasion and obscurity. This radical book, which covers the whole of James's career, will quickly be recognized as a defining text in this emerging field of James studies.

During the past decade governments around the globe have introduced institutional mechanisms to promote the advancement of women, including measures to increase women's political participation rates and to incorporate women's interests into policy-making. Why have they done so? How successful have these initiatives been? What are the emerging agendas facing gender equality advocates now? In the New Politics of Gender Equality Judith Squires examines the origins, evolution and key features of three strategies that have been employed across the world in pursuit of gender equality - quotas, policy agencies and gender mainstreaming. The author critically examines each strategy to see how far they transform political institutions and agendas and to what extent they lead rather to the assimilation of women in male-defined structures. Squires argues that a multi-pronged approach, drawing on democratic rather than technocratic strategies, offers the best potential for advancing gender equality. She highlights too the limitations of approaches that ignore inequalities among women and the challenges of developing equality initiatives to address multiple and cross-cutting inequalities between groups. Judith Squires is Professor of Political Theory, University of Bristol. She has written, researched and published widely in the field of gender politics and gender equality.

This volume is a holistic assessment of six decades of European integration as seen through a gender lens. It features the insights of scholars from nine countries, who analyze new and old barriers to gender equality in all realms of EU activity. The first part of the volume offers a critique of mainstream integration theories and situates women across core institutional settings. It traces women's roles as formal actors, as participants in expert networks, and as creative conceptualizers introducing paradigm-changing frameworks and strategies. It also recognizes women as policy innovators contributing to the larger integration project. In the second part the contributors pay special attention to the development and effects of gender mainstreaming. They explore 'gendering' dynamics and outcomes in EU policy domains, including agriculture, the employment and social policy fields, the research, science and technology sector, and the emergent EU migration and citizenship policy arena.

This is an important collection of essays, many of them very original and outstanding, that will further the field of history of sexuality in general and will contribute to the German historiography in particular. . Lutz Sauerteig, University of Durham

This volume provides a thought provoking and thorough engagement with various aspects of Foucault's writing, at once paying homage to core themes in the history of German sexuality and charting a course for future research...The organization, structure, and coherence of each section is very strong...Most intriguing is its blend of approaches and blurring of time, distance (the Atlantic divide in scholarship, that is), and disciplinarity. . Jennifer Evans, Carleton University

Michel Foucault's seminal "The History of Sexuality" (1976-1984) has since its publication provided a context for the emergence of critical historical studies of sexuality. This collection reassesses the state of the historiography on sexuality-a field in which the German case has been traditionally central. In many diverse ways, the Foucauldian intervention has governed the formation of questions in the field as well as the assumptions about how some of these questions should be answered. It can be argued, however, that some of these revolutionary insights have ossified into dogmas or truisms within the field. Yet, as these contributions meticulously reveal, those very truisms, when revisited with a fresh eye, can lead to new, unexpected insights into the history of sexuality, necessitating a return to and reinterpretation of Foucault's richly complex work. This volume will be necessary reading for students of historical sexuality as well as for those readers in German history and German studies generally who have an interest in the history of sexuality.

Scott Spector is Professor in the Department of History and Professor and Chair of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Helmut Puff is Professor in the Departments of History and Germanic Languages at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Dagmar Herzog is Distinguished Professor of History and Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Sissy home boys or domestic outlaws? Through a series of vivid case studies taken from across the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Matt Cook explores the emergence of these trenchant stereotypes and looks at how they play out in the home and family lives of queer men.

A critical survey of Hollywood film musicals from the 1960s to the present. This book examines how, in the post-studio system era, cultural, industrial and stylistic circumstances transformed this once happy-go-lucky genre into one both fluid and cynical enough to embrace the likes of "Rocky Horror" and pave the way for "Cannibal!" and "Moulin Rouge!."

The Soviet attempt to propagandise the "new Soviet woman" through the magazines "Rabotnitsa" and "Krest'yanka" from the 1920s to the end of the Stalin era is explored here. Women were expected to play a full role in the construction of socialism, but they also had to reproduce the population. Balancing work and family did not prove easy in a climate of shifting economic and demographic priorities, and the periodic changes made to the model are charted here.

In this original work, Stone studies the structure and social presuppositions of several narratives from the Deuteronomistic History in which sexual activity plays a significant role. Both narratological and anthropological tools are utilized in the textual analysis. Stone interestingly notes the link between sexual activity, gender and prestige structures; the emphasis on male contest and female chastity discussed by anthropologists of honour and shame; and the role of the exchange of women in relations between men. In each story, sexual practice is primarily related to male struggles for honour and power.>

This provocative volume is comprised of psychological, socioeconomic, and cultural perspectives on couple dynamics, particularly gender dynamics, and the future of marriage. Featuring data on married, cohabitating, male/female, and same-sex couples, the authors of the book's chapters analyze the changing impacts of work, parenting, and the health benefits of marriage for men and women. Trajectories in the evolution toward gender equality provide the backdrop for discussions of women and men as partners, parents, and workers in contemporary society. Contributors also keep a sharp focus on the complexities of gender issues as they intersect with crucial contexts of cohort, class, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Among the topics covered: Gender equality and economic inequality: impacts on marriage. Expansionist theory expanded: integrating sociological and psychological perspectives on gender, work, and family change. Gender, work, and family: action in the interactions. Changes in U.S. mothers' and fathers' time use: causes and consequences. A case for gay fathers. Gender, marriage, and health for same-sex and different-sex couples Gender and Couple Relationships documents social roles and social change with fascinating insight to advance research in fields of psychology, sociology, demography and economics and to the benefit of work organizations, policy makers, family and couple therapists and other mental health professionals.

The introduction and 10 essays in this volume address questions about how feminist scholars conceptualize gender and view it in relationship to other attributes of individuals and of social systems. The authors strive for intersectional analyses broadening that approach beyond the gender, race and class paradigm to include sexuality, employing a variety of methodologies, and arguing that intersectionality is, or should be, not just theory, but praxis as well. The topics include the empowerment of women globally; the relationship of gender to international migration; gender differences in organizational participation; heteronormativity in organizations and in the media; the ways that the global affects the local in legislation, the workplace and the academy; the relationship between positive stereotypes of women and support for women's rights; and essentialist themes in men's movements. The discussions of globalization and empowerment and of migration are explicitly transnational in perspective. The remaining essays analyze data gathered in particular locations, but all have broader implications. Three nation-specific essays focus on organizational participation in Brazil, feminism in the Canadian academy, and sexual harassment legislation in Japan. Those on the media, social movements and voluntary organizations, and on modern prejudice are based on data from the United States. All of the authors and co-authors, whether professors emerita or graduate students, are trained in the social sciences. Nevertheless, the essays reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary approach to data and methods that characterizes contemporary feminist writing and research.

This ground-breaking study argues that literature and criminology share a common concern to understand modernity and that this project is often focused upon gender-specific criminality. Central to this concern is duplicity masquerade and performance. These subjects are explored for the first time in relation to criminality with reference to a range of literary and popular texts, from Dickens and Poe through to Toni Morrison and Easton Ellis, in which the traditional boundaries between different genders and sexualities are made more fluid and complex than in traditional criminal narratives.